Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Miura K-Grind Wedge Review

I don’t do a lot of equipment reviews because I tend to think that equipment has such varying opinions that I’m not sure my reviews would help. However, I do think there is a club that a lot of golfers should try and demo.

I purchased the Miura K-Grind wedge this past week and have practiced with it for almost a week now and logged in 54 holes of golf with it.

I’ve had some keen interest in Miura since I’ve got back into the game after an 8-year layoff in 2009. I always liked the looks of the Miura equipment and since I’m a devout muscleback blades player, Miura has equipment after my own heart. Currently, Nick Price plays their 1957 Small Blade irons and KJ Choi recently won The Players with their cavity CB-501 irons and traditional wedges.

My first encounter with the K-Grind came at the Demo Day for this year’s PGA Merchandise Show. Miura did not have a tent at the Demo Day, but the KBS Shafts tent had the K-Grind installed in one of their black wedge shafts. I had never even read about the K-Grind at that point, but I really liked the club. I hit a variety of different shots from the short grass and long grass and came away very interested in what I had experienced.

Later on, I read about the K-Grind and the description behind the ‘fluted’ design was able to articulate exactly what I felt when I demo’d the club.

“These three channels reduce the resistance against the wedge in sand, thick rough, and even the fairway. The sole of the wedge moves with the grass instead of against it. The channels move around the sand instead of colliding with it. It allows the wedge to accelerate thru the ball with less effort in every condition to improve the odds of hitting a good shot.” – Miuragolf.com

With that, I eventually decided to purchase one for myself. I was a little skeptical about how it would operate from the fairway. I was typically carrying a 47* pitching, a 54* Sand Wedge and a 60* lob wedge. I was a little worried that I would lose too much distance compared to my 54* and that would possibly cause some problems when I got in between a PW and a SW for distance. However, those worries were put to rest. I had a KBS wedge shaft put in there and added ¼” to the shaft length. The results were that I don’t think I lost any distance at all, despite keeping the loft at 56*. And living up the Miura trademark of a great, soft feeling club. When you catch this baby flush, you cannot get a club to feel better than this.

The other concern I had was how would it react to the turf in Florida. Central Florida is a bit unique because come June it will get very hot out, but also will rain a few times every week. However, if we go a week without rain, the ground gets very hard quickly.

In other words, you get a various amount of lies even on the same golf course. One can get nice, plush lie on one hole, then a very tight lie on the next hole, then some hard pan on the very next hole. And then there’s the plushy lies that go into the grain of the bermuda grass and you can easily stick one into the turf.

With the K-Grind’s high amount of bounce angle (12*), I was worried that the tight lie and hard pan lies may present some real difficulty. But I was pleasantly surprised to find that was not the case at all. In fact, I could hit every shot imagineable…with ease…from just about any type of lie. The only shot I could not hit with consistency is a flop shot from a hard pan lie. But, the wedge that I can do that with will be the first.

Have to hit a low pitch from 6 inch rough? Not a problem.

Need to flop one from a tight lie? Piece of cake.

Long, high greenside bunker shot? You’ll make it look easy.

In fact, the facet of the wedge that took me the longest to get used to is that it is so good from difficult and bad lies, that I actually needed to slow down the clubhead a bit or I would hit it too far. I actually wonder if they are thinking of a similar grind for a set of irons.

Nonetheless, I am extremely happy with my purchase.

The wedge conforms to the 2010 USGA grooves rule. I got my K-Grind fro $179 from Miura dealer Victory Custom Golf (www.victorycustomgolf.com). They offer 11 different shaft options (some are at an added charge) and 45 different grip options (no extra charge). For other Miura dealers, check out http://www.miuragolf.com/dealermap.asp